


Kids Bounce Back Fast (and Other Lies)

by sartiebodyshots



Category: Falling Skies
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 05:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5193929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sartiebodyshots/pseuds/sartiebodyshots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt misses the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kids Bounce Back Fast (and Other Lies)

Matt misses the war. 

Not, like, the people dying.  That sucked. 

Not how sad and angry and scared everyone got.  That sucked, too. 

(Not that he ever got sad or scared.  He was always brave and tough like Hal and Ben and Dad.)  (He’s not a little kid.)

But there was always someone around.  His brothers or Dad or Weaver or Maggie or Cochise or Anne or _someone_.  Even Shaq was fun.

Or a patrol to go on.  Something important to do.  He’s really good at cleaning guns, all kinds of guns. 

Now…

Matt has his own room.  They have a big, old building as a house now, so he doesn’t get to share with anyone.  He basically has a whole wing of the building to himself.  His room is so huge and the only person in it is him.

Sometimes during the war, when Matt got (not lonely not scared, never lonely or scared), when he _felt like it_ , okay? when Matt felt like it, he could go find Hal or Ben or Dad on the rare occasions that he had his own room.  He could keep them company when they slept and he’d fall asleep too.  Ben didn’t sleep as much as everyone else, but he would still pretend for Matt.

But now, Dad has Cochise and Hal has Shaq and Ben has Frederick.  They need their privacy to do ‘adult stuff’ (that’s what they say, but Matt knows what sex is) or whatever.  And Virginia is his _little_ sister.

So Matt spends a lot of nights alone, up in his room, wishing that he got to sleep in a room with everyone again. 

During the day things aren’t much better.  Dad and Cochise work in one building and they bring Virginia with them and Ben works in another and Frederick is at the Volm Embassy all day and Hal thinks he’s sneaky when he goes to the gun range with Shaq, but Matt knows where he’s going because he followed him one day.  One time he tried to tag along, but Hal said no. 

So he wanders around and explores DC, alone, because there’s nothing else to do.  He’s pretty sure that everyone thinks he’s going to school because someone walks him there every day, but school is for dumb kids who want to learn stuff. 

Matt already knows everything that he needs to know.  He can fire a gun and keep it clean.  He knows how to stay alive.  He knows he can kill someone and be okay with it, as long as that person is trying to hurt his family. 

Math and science seem kind of small next to stuff like that.  Besides, Ben is the smart one, that’s what everyone always says.  They really only need one smart one, probably.

It’s really easy to sneak out of the school once whoever drops him off there because there’s no guards or anything.  Exploring the city is way more fun anyway, even if it isn’t as important as the stuff he got to do in the war.  But he has found a couple secret ways out of the city, which is pretty important.

~~If~~ ~~when~~ ~~if~~ when they get attacked again, Matt’ll be able to show his family ways out of the city, so they’ll be safe.  All the tunnels he makes note of are big enough even for Shaq.  His family is a lot bigger and better at fighting than it used to be, but they can’t lose anyone, not like they lost Mom. 

~~He feels like he should miss Mom more, but he barely remembers her.  Most of what he remembers is probably fake anyway.  He doesn’t remember most of what people talk about when they talk about his mom.  Everyone says Hal looks like her, but Matt doesn’t know if they’re right or not because he doesn’t remember.~~

All Matt wants is to not be lonely and useless.  But everyone still looks at him like he’s some dumb kid who can’t do anything and should just waste his time in school. 

Matt Mason misses the war.  He grew up in war, and so this peace doesn’t fit quite right.  Everyone says it’s great that things are getting back to normal, but they’re not for Matt.  Everything feels wrong and fake and almost pointless.  If he got sad, he’d probably be sadder now than he was during all the fighting. 

Everyone always asks him how he’s doing, how he’s ‘coping,’ if he wants to talk.  But Matt knows no one wants to hear him say that everything seems wrong and weird and pointless, so he just shrugs and says he’s fine.

He overhears people talking about him, sometimes people he doesn’t even know, because he’s good at overhearing, and they always say _it’s because he’s young_ and _kids bounce back from trauma quick like that_ and Matt shrugs it off even if he isn’t a kid because he’s fine and at least his family isn’t worrying about him that much.

Matt misses the war, and honestly, he’s pretty sure that they’re not safe anyway.


End file.
